This invention relates to the hair accessory and toy fields, and more particularly, to a combination hair accessory and toy.
Both hair accessories and toys are old in the art. Hair accessories come in many shapes, sizes, constructions and manners of operation. In particular, there are hair combs which keep one's hair in place through the teeth elements of a comb, there are hair clips and barrettes which keep a person's hair in place by having two arm sections which have located there between some of the person's hair and which then clip together to secure those elements of the hair in a certain location, and many and varied other types of hair accessories, including what has come to be known as the scrunchy.
A scrunchy is essentially a rubberband element covered with some type of fabric, whether it be natural of synthetic fiber, wherein when the rubberband is in its at rest position, the fabric is bunched up around the rubberband in a decorative manner. The way these scrunchy hair accessories hold a person's hair is through the center opening, with the scrunchy essentially being used as women have for many years as a regular rubberband. In particular, a certain amount of hair is pulled through the center of the scrunchy, "rubberband", a twist is made securing that diameter of hair within a smaller diameter of the twisted rubberband. The hair is then pulled once again through the bigger opening and the rubberband is once again twisted, creating another bigger opening. This process is repeated a number of different times until the hair is securely located within the rubberband creating a ponytail and/or a pigtail type of look.
The scrunchy was created to simply add a decorative fabric covering to the rubberband to further enhance the look of the person's hair, so that now the person, when seen by another person, doesn't simply have a brown rubberband in their hair, but some nice colored fabric adorning their hair.
It is also very old in the art that toys exist for people, especially young children, to play with. It is also old in the art to make these toys interactive with the user. Such manners of interaction have in the past included what has been named a beanbag, where beans or other types of substantially spherically-shaped balls are located within a fabric container and the container is malleable in the person's hand. Beanbags do not necessarily have beans inside, but any type of substantially spherical plurality of balls which move with relation to each other when manipulated by the hand of a user.
Interactive toys have also most recently consisted of toys which when one element of the toy is pressed, speak to the person playing with the toy. Usually, the speech associated with these types of toys is non-interactional, and merely consists of pre-recorded statements or songs.
To the extent known by the inventor, there has never been a hair accessory which combines the functioning of the hair accessory with the interactive playfulness of a toy. Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a combination hair accessory and toy which ornamentally holds a person's hair in certain desired positions while at the same time being an interactive toy that can be played with by the user, or a non-user companion of the user, while the hair accessory is in place on the user's head.